Redux

Today, Stormy Danielson was re-creating the late Renaissance's Antonio Allegri da Correggio's Jupiter and Io. Danielson's re-creation was to remain true to the original in every way but one--the same detail, if one could call such a feature a mere "detail"--that his anonymous billionaire patron had ordered in commissioning the series of works upon which the artist was now hard at work. The painter thought that his benefactor's obsession with such a "detail" was ludicrous, but the patron considered it the very mark of genius. That such a feature could improve upon Correggio's masterpiece--or any of the other great painters' works which Danielson had been commissioned to re-create--was preposterous. Nevertheless, art had fallen upon hard times, and a man, even a painter as brilliant as Danielson, must eat and pay the rent.

Therefore, with the greatest reluctance, and barely able to conceal the horror of his sponsor's idea, Danielson had agreed to the terms of his commission, which was to replace the woman in each painting with a male-to-female transsexual who had decided to retain her male genitals rather than to deliver them to the plastic surgeon's scalpel. Jupiter and Io was the first in a series of three such re-creations that Danielson had agreed to paint.

Displayed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria, Correggio's masterpiece was a companion piece to Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle, a homoerotic work celebrating the seizure of the Greek youth by Zeus in the form of a mighty raptor who carried him off to Mount Olympus. Jupiter and Io was itself inspired by the seduction, by Jupiter (or Zeus, as he was known by the Greeks), of the princess Io, as the story is recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The original oil painting was created for Federigo Gonzaga, the first duke of Mantua, who had intended to decorate a room of his palace with The Loves of Jupiter. The amorous god was supposedly a distant ancestor of the Gonzaga family and a great womanizer like the duke himself.

To suggest the alien nature of the deity, Correggio had depicted Jupiter in the form of a dark cloud out of which emerges a masculine face with cloudy lips with which to kiss Io's lips and a gray hand with which to clasp her waist. Although the naked Io's posture is awkward, suggesting that she has been caught off guard--her white robe is beneath her buttocks and right arm, as if it has slipped from her shoulders or has been removed by the vaporous deity--she offers her seducer no resistance, and, indeed, seems to enjoy his urgent embrace.

As Correggio depicted Io, she is a young woman, in her twenties, perhaps, of classic beauty. Her face is angelic in its innocence and purity, with large eyes, a fine nose, unremarkable lips, a small chin, a sharp jaw line, and auburn hair swept up in a bun. Her body, although naked, is seen from the rear, offering a view of her smooth, but ordinary back, and the top of her buttocks which are truncated, as it were, by her seated position. Her legs are smooth and shapely. She is not overweight, although she is a bit plump, perhaps, by today's standards of feminine beauty, which call for skeletal versions of womanhood that resemble the female survivors of Auschwitz and Dachau.

In order to exhibit the revised figure's male genitalia, Danielson found it necessary to slightly shift Io's posture, so that she sits upon one of her own calves and ankles, which raises her buttocks just enough to show a glimpse of her testicles and penis, which the artist positions between her legs, purely for the sake of pleasing the patron who has commissioned the work. Except for this "detail," the re-creation of Correggio's work is an exact copy that could hang in place of Correggio's original with no one, perhaps, being the wiser. The penis and testicles, however, are certain indicators that the painting is but a copy--and an altered copy, at that.

The transsexual, or "shemale," as his benefactor insisted upon referring to the model whom Danielson hired for this painting, looked very much like whoever Correggio's model was; other than the male genitals, their resemblance was striking. Her name, Danielson had been told, was Anne Swan, an unlikely appellation, which, Danielson had little doubt, she'd made up, just as she'd made up her feminine gender--a copy, except in one "detail," of a woman, Danielson thought derisively, just as his own imitation Jupiter and Io was a copy, except in the same "detail," of Correggio's masterpiece. The irony was as obvious as it was odious to the painter, but, again, he had bills to pay, and his commissions would provide him with the means to meet these obligations and, perhaps, to take a small vacation after the third in the series was painted.

He'd resigned himself to his use of her as the model for his Jupiter and Io re-creation, or rip off, as he thought of the counterfeit work he'd painted, but vowed that he would replace her with another model for his next painting. He wanted, as much as possible, to find women--or "shemales"--whose own looks, modified as they had been, by hormonal therapy and plastic surgery, matched as closely as possible those of the models who'd posed for the original masterpieces he was duplicating, except, of course, for the one added "detail" of the female subject's sex change.

That was before he'd fallen in love with Anne, a situation which he would have regarded with equal parts incredulity and horror, before it happened.

It had occurred in stages, over the three weeks' time that it had taken Danielson to replicate Correggio's masterpiece.

In directing Anne as to how to pose, in instructing her to adjust the tilt of her chin, to lower her left arm or to raise her right, to settle more firmly upon her left buttock, to push her "male parts" more firmly between her legs, and to remain absolutely still, Danielson had observed anew, with each direction, as painters are wont to notice, the exquisite loveliness of his model. He had discerned the way in which the morning sun illuminated her golden flesh, highlighting the flawless, fluid contours of her facial profile, her brow, her nose, her lips, her chin, the sweep of her flowing throat, her delicate shoulders, her sculpted back, the flare of her hips, her slightly elevated buttocks, and, of course, the small, flaccid penis and the sac of balls between her sleek thighs. She was an altogether beautiful woman--or "shemale"--and, as always, it was Danielson's blessing and curse as an artist to be captivated by beauty.

During the breaks that she took from her modeling, Danielson had begun to strike up conversations about her. Awkward at first, his halting speech, his indecisive manner, and his obvious embarrassment in conversing with such an exotic creature as the hermaphroditic Anne did not win her affections. She'd replied dutifully, in monosyllabic terms, to his questions, sometimes refusing to answer his queries at all, finding them "too personal."

However, slowly, she warmed to his brusque manner, his fumbling interrogations, and his unschooled attempts at civility. It did not hurt his cause, either, that he was both a fine artist and a handsome man. In the midst of one of their question-and-answer sessions, she, still undraped, had stalled his interrogation by probing his mouth with her tongue as she pressed her breasts--and her cock and balls--against his chest and groin.

Thereafter, from that moment on, he was hers, and the "detail" of her burgeoning manhood, clearly evident between their embracing bodies, was no longer an impediment to their love. Indeed, it became a significant factor in Danielson's attraction to her exotic beauty, just as, before, it had been a repellant. The artist now understood his patron's obsession with "shemales." Such a mania seemed, indeed, not a fixation at all, but natural and inevitable.

On the day of the painting's completion, Anne stood beside Danielson, her arm around his waist, and his around hers. He was clothed, as usual, in his boots, jeans, sweatshirt, and artist's smock. She was nude, as always. "What does it mean?" she asked the artist.

He looked at her, his devotion to the transsexual obvious in his loving gaze. "Mean?" he repeated, as if the concept were alien to him.

"The painting."

"It is the story of Jupiter and Io."

"I know that, silly, but what does it mean?"

He smiled at her naiveté. It was one of the things he loved about her, beside her beauty and the fabulous incongruity of her mixing of humanity's sexes and genders. He started to lecture her about "art for art's sake," but decided, instead, to approach the topic from Anne's more naïve point of view. "You mean what does it mean, as it what's the meaning, or the moral, of the story?"

She smiled. "Exactly."

"Well," he began, "there is a certain openness in the interpretation of a work of art--even a copy such as this--but my patron's intent, in replacing the female figures in the series he's commissioned me to paint, with a shemale--I mean, a transwoman--" Anne had told him how she detested the word "shemale"--is to show--how did he put it?--ah, yes!--to show that gender, if not sex, is entirely plastic and fluid, and that, as a consequence, both masculine and feminine characteristics may be exhibited in the same figure, regardless of the cultural and artistic milieu out of which any specific work of art itself arises."

"Wow. He said all that?" Anne mused. "The same asshole who refers to transgender women as 'shemales'?"

Danielson laughed. "A man who is astute in one area may be, as you say, an 'asshole' in another."

"So what does all that mean, that stuff that he said about 'plastic and fluid' and all that?"

The artist smiled. "He means, my dear, that masculinity and femininity are accidental, rather than essential."

"You mean, gender is socially determined, rather than innate?"

"Yes, and, more than that, that even our sex is something that, although it is assigned, as it were, by nature, is arbitrary and random, and, therefore accidental and capricious, rather than necessary and essential."

"So we can change sex?"

"If we like, although, I must admit, I prefer the hermaphroditic mixture of sex and gender that your choice, in foregoing sex-reassignment surgery and retaining your male parts, represents."

Anne kissed him. "You say the sweetest things," she told the artist, "even if, most of the time, they're mostly incomprehensible."

*

Their next project was Sandro Botticelli's famous tour de force, Venus Rising from the Sea.

In the original, the Greek goddess of beauty stands, near the center of the painting, on the half shell that has floated her ashore amid a hail of flowers, courtesy of Zephyr and Chloris, gods of the winds, who hover to her right, providing the wind that propels her ashore. Her flowing red hair lies along her left side, the ends of these fiery locks draped over her left hand, which is strategically placed over her genitals to hide them from the viewer's gaze. Her right arm is lifted so that her forearm and right hand obscure her right breast. Her left tit, however, apple-small, hard-looking, and round, is on display. Although she is naked, showing plenty of skin, the goddess' privy parts, except for the left breast, are concealed; she is more a tease than a temptress. Venus is ill-disposed, in Botticelli's painting, to leave even her left breast revealed for long, for one of the Horae, or deities of the seasons, rushes forward with a flower-printed robe with which the goddess of love may cloak her nakedness.

As with Jupiter and Io, Danielson had to make a few, not-so-subtle changes in the original composition in order to incorporate Anne's male genitals into the figure of Venus. By moving the goddess' left arm so that it hangs to her side and the hank of hair that it holds is also moved from her groin, Danielson was able to include Anne's cock and balls, thereby transforming Botticelli's vision of the goddess' birth into one that presented a hermaphroditic, rather than a female, deity. As with Jupiter and Io, the transsexual transformation of Venus was startling and gave a whole new world of possible interpretations to the work of art.

This time, in celebration of the completion of the second of the three commissioned works, the artist and his model, having become lovers in spirit, if not yet in the flesh, honored the occasion with more than kisses. Kneeling before Danielson, Anne bowed low, worshipping the painter's prick. Letting her open jaws descend over his stiff, standing erection, she drew her rounded lips up and down, in a slow, steady rhythm that brought to Danielson's mind the relentless inflow and outflow of the ocean's surf, reminding him, as did Anne herself, of the goddess of beauty's birth from the foam of the sea.

Sensing the rising urgency in the artist's loins, Anne quickened the pace with which she sucked Danielson's cock, and he was soon relieving himself in her mouth, jet after warm, thick jet of his fecundating fluid filling her oral cavity. She swallowed and swallowed as his convulsing cock spewed another volley of semen into the warm-soft-wetness of her mouth, and, still, more splattering ejaculate sprayed over her tongue and palate. She swallowed these additional bursts of semen, delighting in the salty, sea-taste of him.

It was the first time that Danielson had ever ejaculated in front of one of his works, and he found the experience tremendously exciting, a signature of sorts. It was as if the central figure of his painting had come to life, taken on flesh instead of paint, and stepped off his canvas to demonstrate her adoration of him, her creator.

*

The last of the three paintings took Danielson a week to complete, but, when it was finished, he saw, at once, that, even as a mere replication of the original, it was, in its own right, a masterpiece worthy of one of the great galleries of the world. As always, the patient, longsuffering Anne, had, likewise, been the perfect model, this time portraying Eve, with whom the artist had coupled a portrait of himself, nude, like her, as Adam.

This time, the painting that Danielson copied, altering only the "detail" of Eve's sex organs, was by Tiziano Vecelli, better known to the world as Titian. There had been a debate among philosophers, theologians, artists, and others as to whether humanity's first parents should be depicted as having had navels. Like Venus, they were said to have been created as adults. Therefore, reason would assume that they had never have been in need of an umbilical cord and, consequently, would not possess the scar, or navel, resulting from the removal of this fleshly lifeline. Those who opted to paint the famous first couple without a navel saw the result as eerily unnatural looking, some of them painting in a tree's or a shrub's stray leaf to conceal the missing scar. Others painted the navel, whether, logically, it should be present or not, Titian being among them.

Because of the scripture that reads, "male and female, he created them," some artists had rendered Adam and Eve as a single, hermaphroditic creature, so, from that standpoint, Danielson supposed that there was some precedent for depicting Eve as a transwoman, although, by the same standard, he ought also to portray Adam in the same vein, as having had both breasts and a penis and testicles and, for that matter, a vagina as well. Instead, he painted the couple as his patron had insisted, Adam as a typical, but idealized, man; Eve as a male-to-female transsexual who had opted out of sex-change surgery, deciding to keep her male genitals as part of who and what she was, neither fully male nor fully female, but a member of a rare and mystical third sex.

The portrayal of Eve as a transwoman, rather than as a woman, enriched the mythical and theological implications of the Genesis account of divine creation. Was the serpent's temptation to her designed to encourage her to change her sex, to become a woman rather than a man or a hermaphrodite? Was it to forego the possibility of womanhood in order to embrace manhood or hermaphroditism instead? Was it to become both male and female? Was the temptation to become less, as either a woman or a man, or to become more, as a hybrid mixture of both sexes? What was God's will with regard to human sexuality and gender? What was nature's purpose, if any, in the process? Were Adam and Eve meant to embrace heterosexuality exclusively, or both heterosexuality and homosexuality, or, indeed, for that matter, transsexuality? The substitution of the transsexual Anne for the female Eve as the central player in the fall of humanity introduced all these questions and more.

Danielson and Anne celebrated this, the artist's magnum opus of the series, by making wild, passionate love. The painter took his model from behind, penetrating her anally. After lubricating her asshole and his cock, Danielson knelt behind his Io-Venus-Eve, who had positioned herself before him, on her elbows and knees, her legs spread well apart. Grasping his erection in his fist, Danielson aimed it between the silken, inward-curving buttocks of his model's perfect ass and drove his hips forward, slowly but resolutely, forcing wide her anal sphincter.

His penis entered his model's asshole, plunging into her rectum, its entire length cramming her ass.

Ann grunted, but pressed her rear firmly against the invading member, the firm-soft cheeks flattening before the artist's groin.

The painter eased his cock back through the model's impaled bottom, drawing the thick column of flesh slowly into view, an inch at a time, and, when just the glans remained within the wide-spread ring, he thrust his member back into Anne's asshole. His cock rammed easily through the relaxed sphincter, plumbing the transwoman's depths. His penis moved fluidly, and he quickened his pace, fucking her more forcefully. In and out, back and forth, he attacked and withdrew, assaulted and retreated, charged and drew back.

In response to the repeated thrusts into her gut, Anne gasped, moaned, groaned, and whimpered.

Her sounds enflamed Danielson's lust, and he pounded her harder, faster, almost frantically ramming and cramming her full of his massive member. Her ass cheeks rippled with as they reacted to the relentless pummeling, jiggling and flexing. They flattened and sprang back into fullness as the artist continued his merciless assault, driving his cock into her depths again and again with a violence that bordered upon savagery.

Anne bit her lower lip, repressing her urge to cry out, to shriek, to scream, for the endless, forceful pounding she was taking, although incredibly sexy, was almost more than she could bear. Her own diminutive penis stood up, stiff and swollen, against her tummy, her small balls swinging in time with Danielson's thrusts and withdrawals.

The painter ravished his model, with no other thought than to fuck her, as fast and as forcefully as he could, for as long as he could, the ravishment having become an end unto itself. His hips moved according to some primeval instinct as old as time, and he was driven entirely by hormones and the propensities not of his own nature, but of Nature herself, a captive to primordial needs and irrational desires.

As he launched his cock deep into Anne's ass again, something inside him seemed to uncoil all at once, to unwind within his balls, and to spring from his loins in thick, spurting streamers. He withdrew his prick, and several more warm, wet, white banners of semen unfurled, these splattering Anne's back, buttocks, and thighs. Danielson's ejaculate dribbled down the model's balls and perineum and trickled down her upper legs. She, too, lost control, and her small cock convulsed, spewing her seed across the studio floor. She gasped, and another jet of her fecundating fluid spurted from her.